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We’ve just published a great short review of the film Gravity by Eva Amsen, who raises a really interesting point: why on earth (no pun intended) is this film classified as science fiction? As she points out, the movie is set in the present day using tech that exists right now – it just happens to take place in orbit around our planet.

It’s a weird sort of associative problem, I think: a large number of science fiction tales are set in space or on other planets, so we are conditioned to think of space as being in the realm of science fiction. But scientists in space are a current reality, and realistic stories about them are just normal stories, and no more speculative than any other mainstream novel about our world.

Eva points out that the few pieces of artistic license that the film does take – such as putting all the spacecraft in the same orbit to make things a bit easier for the protagonist – is no more “science fiction” than the very common leaps of faith in transport that we see all the time in Hollywood films, such as car chases through known cities that involve impossible elements like getting from point A to point B in one minute when in real life it would involve an implausible detour.

I remember seeing Sleepless in Seattle when I lived in Seattle, and smiling at the outraged mutterings around me about the final chase scene, whose impossibility is summed up nicely here:

Sam and Jonah go by motorboat from their houseboat that is moored on the eastern side of Lake Union to Alki Beach in West Seattle. Annie follows in her rental car, watching them from her vehicle “the entire way.” This is impossible. To get from their houseboat by boat to Alki Beach (near where I live) involves going over the lake, through the Ballard locks, and across Elliot Bay (Puget Sound). The only road into West Seattle and to Alki Beach from the city does not follow their water route, and it is further south and goes over the West Seattle bridge – some miles from the lake and too far away for her to be able to see them on the water. The boat ride to the beach would also take over an hour with the wait to go through the locks, though they appear to reach it much sooner.

But this didn’t cause Sleepless in Seattle to be classified as science fiction.

So I say, it’s time to reclaim space for the genre of lab lit. We’d love to see more books and films like Gravity seeing the light of day.

You have your marching orders, all you writers out there.

4 Comments

There are several issues with Gravity that to my mind make it more Science Fiction than Science Fact. The convenient locations of the various places on orbit is already noted, but there are other operational issues in Gravity which elide the facts to make it more convenient (and survivable) for the characters. These include the amount of time taken to put on (and take off) a space suit, and the amount of time it takes to repressurise an airlock.

But above and beyond all these, is the key science fictional idea that drives the film: Kessler syndrome, the hypthesised debris cascade that would result as space debris hits other satellites causing even more debris, and eventually wiping out everything in low Earth orbit (LEO). Even ignoring the fact that the data linking satellites, TDRS, that are used to link communications across LEO are in geosynchronous orbit (GEO) and thus immune from the effect – something the film ignores to add narrative tension – the Kessler syndrome is not something that has been probed to be real. It’s plausible, but it is not a scientific fact, confirmed (thank goodness) by experiment.

To my mind that makes Gravity science fiction more than anything else. Hard SF, for sure, since they try as hard as possible to get everything else as right as they can given the story they want to tell, but SF nevertheless.

I’d contrast this with another film that is borderline SF: Deep Impact. This posits the possibility of a large asteroid impact threatening all life on Earth. Most people would call this film SF, but, unlike Gravity and the Kessler Syndrome, we know that such giant impacts have happened in the past – one wiped out the dinosaurs.

Would you classify that as SF, like most people, or as something different?

Hi Dave – absolutely no beef with science fiction here. I love science fiction – and in fact it is my preferred genre for the cinema. I am only pointing out that there is something about space that seems inspire a knee-jerk misclassification, which I think it’s fair – and quite interesting – to question.

Clearly there is a grey zone in defining genre. But I am arguing that the poetic license and made-up stuff in Gravity is no more drastic than the conceits you find in almost all works of fiction. Authors makes things up all the time to make the plot more interesting and to make things flow more easily. It’s not just about transport and how long it takes to get into your spacesuit. The invention of a plausible item that does not currently exist, such as Kessler Syndrome, is no different to my mind than a novel about a singer which describes a fictitious international competition for the protagonist to enter, for example. Nearly all lab lit novels make up plausible science, but would never be thought of as science fiction: my own, for starters (I invented one disease, and several genes). The computer program in Richard Power’s “Galatea 2.2″. The butterfly swarm in Barbara Kingsolver’s “Flight Behavior”. The cancer experiment in Allegra Goodman’s “Intuition”. I could name many others, but you get the idea.

But something about a story set in space seems to override this – normal fictional conceits become “speculative”, even though the backdrop is incredibly solid and real-life. I’m interested in why this is. You might ask why it matters. It doesn’t matter to you or me, but it’s possible that lots of people decided not to see Gravity because “they don’t like science fiction” – which is a real shame because, in the best traditions of lab lit, it’s a nice portrayal of a scientist plying her trade in the real world today.

As far as “Deep Impact”, we’ve never considered this to be SF for the reasons you mention. If you look on the List, you’ll see we’ve classified it as a thriller.

Jenny, good post, and hope you will respond to me here as you did to Dave, above. Your post is well said re Gravity movie was not really sci fi, true. and when you write ”its time for the LabLiterati to reclaim outer space!” how about also posting a blog one day on “it’s time for the LabLiterati to focus on climate change and global warming issues” and using the new cli fi genre as their point of departure? your POV? such novels would be lab lit for sure, but also cli fi, and BRAVO! think about it and post your POV here in comments or full blog post one day? we are on the same team, and on the same page. GO GO GO. ps – Jenny i just heard word that both NYT and TIME mag are both poised to do major news stories on the rise of cli fi as a new literary genre. check the google window in a week or so. both stories are in the can and edited and just waiting publication day. and PS i learned a lot from your website here on lab lit and love what you have done with it. bravo to you

Hi Dan, in the future if you log in first, your comments won’t be moderated (unless they flag up any alarms due to excessive links or something else like that).

The whole ethos of LabLit.com is to see more realistic portrayals of scientists and their profession in mainstream fiction. So we don’t believe it’s time to focus (exclusively) on climate change in particular as you seem to suggest. Clearly we’d be happy to see more novels about all branches of the sciences, including environmental science, but a lot of the novels you advocate are science fiction, which is not what we’re about (though I personally enjoy a good SF tale as mentioned above). Also, some cli-fi deals with climate change itself and not the scientists working on it, which is also not ‘lab lit’ according to the standard definition.

I do think lab lit novels about environmental issues, such as Kingsolver’s Flight Behavior, are an untapped area of science to explore in fiction, and we hope to see more, but there are other neglected areas too.

Let us know when those media pieces come out and we’ll take a look! Sounds exciting.